The nuns

I arrived at the hotel late at night after a rather tiring journey from Moscow

Submitted: May 15, 2017

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Submitted: May 15, 2017

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I arrived at the hotel late at night after a rather tiring journey from Moscow. The taxi drove me to the back entrance from the front yard. There was a terrible darkness in the street, I could
practically not see anything and was hardly able to find the entrance. The cold wind pierced straight through me and I wanted to hide behind the warm walls of my room as quickly as possible. I was
so tired that I could barely see anything in the hotel lobby; I only noticed the gloomy dimness of the old building. Somewhere in the back of the hotel I could hear the sound of a disco or a
restaurant, where dance music was playing.

After a brief check-in, the receptionist gave me my keys, saying that my room was on the top floor of the building, which was three stories up and that they did not have an elevator. Therefore I
was forced to go up the stairs with my rather heavy suitcase. I was so exhausted when I found my room, I tumbled into it, not observing anything in the hall. All of my thoughts were about
taking a hot shower and falling asleep, and I finally did. Outside the window the wind poured out a heart-rending song, slowly enveloping the town of Gatchina. In the suburbs of St. Petersburg the
end of November was already considered almost winter, but the snow had not yet fallen.

A dream gradually took me into its arms, and I did not particularly resist it. That night I saw very strange nuns in my dream, all of them were small and wore brown robes. Two of them knelt in the
corner of my room and silently prayed. I looked out into the hallway, it too was filled with little women in brown clothes. They were everywhere, in all corners of the building: on the stairs, in
the neighboring rooms, in the lobby and even in the corridor where I had heard disco music in the evening before. The whole house was imbued with the soft sounds of their whispers and the rustling
of their clothes. It reminded me of my cherry blossom garden in spring at my country house. When the trees flower, the garden is saturated with buzzing bees collecting nectar. In this way, the nuns
buzzed and worked tirelessly in my dream.

The dream brought about an incomprehensible sense of anxiety and I woke up. There was absolute silence and no one in the room, in the corner where the nuns had prayed in my dream, there was an
old-fashioned TV. Grumbling something about this miserable and damned world, I fell asleep again.

When I woke up in the morning and looked out of the window, I saw that snow had fallen, veiling Gatchina with a silvery white shawl. Winter had declared that it was time for its reign. I went out
of my room into the corridor and was simply blinded by the sight that appeared in front of me. Outside of a window across from my door there was an incredibly beautiful temple with blue domes
covered with snow. It shone irresistibly in the bright morning sun.

I started work with my client in an optimistic mood. During my lunch break, I asked the local residents working there about the temple that I had seen that morning. To my great surprise, I learned
that it was the Intercession Cathedral, which before the October Socialist Revolution had been part of a convent. The hotel in which I was staying used to be the nun’s dormitory and part of the
convent as well. I could not stop thinking about that information for the rest of the day.

In the evening I returned to the hotel. The receptionist had gone out, and as I waited for her I began to look at the photos on the walls. Suddenly I felt my blood turn to ice in my veins - in all
of the photos there were nuns in brown robes. In one of the photographs they sat in several rows, and in the middle sat a priest. Compared to him, they all were so small, like dwarfs.